


Of Upright Conversation

by UrsulaKohl



Category: Original Work
Genre: Embroidery, Epistolary, F/F, Fencing Foils, Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 04:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29272692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrsulaKohl/pseuds/UrsulaKohl
Summary: She is small and habitually very still, with the kind of soft brown hair and rounded cheek that men praise as the epitome of English womanhood and forget five seconds later.Florence cannot stop noticing Miss Drakely.
Relationships: Shy Bookish Victorian Woman/Dashing Victorian Lady Fencer (Original Work)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 21
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Of Upright Conversation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hernameinthesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hernameinthesky/gifts).



Dear George,

George, George, my favorite brother! I meant to tease you for toiling away in the City rather than joining our country party, but if I imbue myself with the spirit of righteousness and true-speaking, as Mother used to implore us to do when we stood beside the nursery fire eyeing some tumbled bit of crockery, I must confess you would find the party dull. Cousin Tom is just as hearty and fond of sport as he ever was, though if you remember the downy cheeks of youth you would laugh to see his curlicue mustache. All the partridges for miles around tremble at his passing. Two or three friends of his, of similar heartiness though different exuberance of mustache, have joined the party at Songhurst House. But, since they rise early to wreak their depredations upon the local wildfowl, I am left almost entirely to the society of women. That society consists of Anna Gilliver that was, Cousin Anna as I must call her now, her own cousin Mrs. Thornburgh, and Mrs. Thornburgh's companion, Miss Drakely. Mrs. Thornburgh is pious, in the old bleak way that entails much reciting of verses and no impulse at all toward charity. I believe she would take an apple from an orphan and replace it with a lecture upon Eve's faithlessness.

Therein lies a joke, the sort of thing I would have laughed at in the days when I had a smudged pinafore and a single braid down my back. For the companion, Miss Drakely, has the Christian name of Eve. Never have I met a woman whom it suited less. She is small and habitually very still, with the kind of soft brown hair and rounded cheek that men praise as the epitome of English womanhood and forget five seconds later. When she moves, she darts like a sparrow. I see her startle like a sparrow, too, every time the crack of a shotgun drifts over the fields. The first few days we were in company together, she said almost nothing save "Very fine" and "I trust the weather will remain fair." I could not persuade her to join me in a ramble—for of course that is the joy of being at Songhurst House, the passage across fields flecked with rampion blue or the froth of beautiful but uneuphonious golden bedstraw, the sight of hawthorn trees curled against the long wind over the Downs. But rambling with me would have taken Miss Drakely from Mrs. Thornburgh's side, and Mrs. Thornburgh brooks no deserters.

Thus, we dragged along in dullness until one evening after dinner when the men joined us early, planning to be abed early as well, and awake in the dark to ambush some far-flung covert. Cousin Tom's friend Mr. Huckel, who had come up with me from the station at Denbigh, joked, "Miss Aprill, what do you keep in that long case with the brass fittings? Is it a rifle of your own?"

"Oh, no," I said. "That is my sword."

Miss Drakely's eyes flicked toward mine. I had assumed they were a good English blue, or perhaps sparrow-brown, but they are a clear, almost golden hazel, ringed about with a dark line. Not eyes for prey. Eyes for a hawk in flight.

"What use has a lady for a sword?" asked Mr. Huckel.

"Why, to kill dragons with," I told him. 

There was a general laugh. Cousin Anna turned the conversation to the excellence of physical activity for strengthening one's constitution. I talked a little bit about the ladies' gymnasium I attend in London, the study and precision I engage, and suchlike things. Mrs. Thornburgh was inclined to be stuffy about the clothing, or costume as she called it, so I spoke enthusiastically of my voluminous skirts.

"Do you place a target above your heart, like the girl on my cigar-box?" 

Perhaps Mr. Huckel had indulged too much in his host's fine brandy. Cousin Tom puffed through his mustache. But I felt Miss Drakely's eyes strike toward mine once more. Hers was an inquiry I did not wish to parry, so I answered honestly. "Oh, yes, I wear a Valentine heart, basted on with a few stitches."

"True red is the greatest trial for laundering," said Cousin Anna, an observation cogent and protective in its dullness.

"Mine is the saddest and most tattered little Valentine," I agreed. "I have taken it off and basted it on so many times, and you know how hopeless I am with a needle."

"Better a foil than a thimble, eh?" laughed Cousin Tom.

Cousin Anna intervened more firmly, moving the talk back toward domestic arts, and there the matter rested for the evening. But the next afternoon at tea, to my surprise, Cousin Anna said, "Dear Florence! I did not wish to press you before the gentlemen, but might we see your sword?"

Mrs. Thornburgh glared, seeking an appropriate quotation. Miss Drakely said, "Oh! Is it possible?" with the suppressed joy of a child slowly realizing that the proposed trip to the Zoo to see a hippopotamus is a real outing, and not a fairy-story. My foil is not like a hippopotamus, save that it might be deadly! It might have been a fairy after all, from the wonder with which Miss Drakely watched me open the latches, and draw the dear shining creature from its case.

I explained, "It is not sharpened, but I keep a button on the end, in any case. The force of the lunge itself is dangerous, compacted into a steel tip." Naturally my tea-gown was not fitted for lunging (it is a very fine, deep blue cotton, scattered with white-printed linden leaves—do not pretend you ignore these feminine fripperies, George, I have seen you dawdle for an hour together over the choice of waistcoat). Instead I demonstrated the way a twist of wrist or shoulder may change the distance of a sword-tip from its target, gently brushing the edge of the cake-basket as I did so. 

Cousin Anna held my sword and exclaimed at its weight. She handed it next to Miss Drakely, who nearly jumped, expecting to be passed over. Her grip was far too tight. I spoke to her of gentleness, of the way a pen and a foil are both the extension of one's hand. She breathed out slowly, and the foil was held—not correctly, there is no right stance at the edges of a tea-table, but like the hand of an acquaintance who will become a friend. I wished that I could see her lunge. She would strike fast, and deadly.

Mrs. Thornburgh, who had finally located a quotation, declaimed, "Their sword shall enter into their own heart, and their bows shall be broken." I realized Cousin Anna was looking with some anxiety at her dainty china tea-cups, and laid my foil away before breaking arose in earnest.

After that conversation, I had far greater hopes of persuading Miss Drakely to a ramble, or even to a walk around the formal garden. Instead Mrs. Thornburgh remembered another invitation, and for a few days I saw Miss Drakely only in passing, as she scurried in and out of rooms or sorted hat-fittings with a focus more suited to preparation for a long campaign than packing for a journey of a couple hours.

They are to leave tomorrow. Today it rained, an awful, overwhelming, un-English rain, the water cascading past the windows like stacked sheets of smoked glass. I retreated to the library, on the theory that none of the company would wish to join me, and began this letter to you. (I suppose that makes a confession: I write to you only when I cannot escape to the out-of-doors. Pardon my frailty, O Best of Brothers!)

I was interrupted by a tiny humming sound. Miss Drakely had slipped through the library door quite noiselessly, and stood behind me. "We will miss you, now that you are going away," I told her, and then cursed myself for making condescending generality of a particular emotion.

"Thank you," she said, with the startled head-shake of a person who expects no regard at all. "I made a thing—I apologize if it is presumptuous, but you said you had not as much skill with a needle as you wished—"

She opened her hands. They held a heart, stitched in fine wool upon canvas, in crimson and vermilion. The stitches were so fine my poor long-sighted eyes could hardly tease them out. But I realized, after a long moment, that at the center of the heart—the heart of the heart, if you will—indicated more by texture and direction than by color, was the shape of a sleeping dragon, serpent tail looped about and ending in a poison sting that made a smaller heart.

"This is astonishing," I said. "I cannot—"

I meant to say, "I cannot accept this work of art," for I saw it was a masterpiece, the sort of thing that would have won a gold medallion in the guilds of old. But her bright hawk eyes were close upon mine, and I found I could not bear to see them fall. I said, instead, "I cannot think how to repay you."

"I do not want payment. What I want—" Oh, it was as if her whole self was a lantern, and now the flame was lit. The motion once confined to darts and flickers shimmered through her face, the frown twisting to smiles, her every gesture opening into hope. 

I set her gift upon the blank half of my half-filled page, and clasped her hands.

A knock came upon the library door, and a servant's voice. "Your pardon, Miss Drakely. Mrs. Thornburgh is asking for you."

"I will be there directly." She pressed a kiss upon my brow and then was gone. I was left behind, struck by the thunderclap of a falcon launched aloft.

Now you have all my news. I have been given a new heart to wear against my own, and a knot that alas, in these benighted days, I cannot disentangle with a sword. Mind you, this heart has a dragon within it, and even in ancient times it was unusual to find a lady defending a serpent! I must break a new path. At the very least, Cousin Anna will give me Miss Drakely's direction. I hope and trust she will find in me a more reliable and trustworthy correspondent than ever I have been to you, most forbearing and forgiving of all brothers.

I am, as ever, your loving sister,  
Florence.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Chocolate Box! May your day be filled with small amusements!
> 
> Florence Aprill's fencing outfit is inspired by one of [Jean Beraud's paintings](https://historicalfencer.com/the-fencing-girl-trend-setter/) of a woman fencer, or their many imitations. I am grateful to [Wildflowers of the Sussex Downs](https://whisperingearth.co.uk/2012/08/27/wildflowers-of-the-sussex-downs/) for helping me ground Florence's rambles in a particular place and season, and to SylvanAuctor and etothey for focused and encouraging beta-reading.


End file.
